After requesting and receiving a URL for the first time, the admin’s responsibility is to define some global settings by clicking on Global Settings. Navigate to Global Settings by clicking on the profile page at the top right. There is a settings tab that opens up, where there are two options: Global and Shared Projects. Click on Global Settings. This opens a settings page where any information entered will be reflected across all the projects created with this URL. 

Some key steps the admin needs to complete in Global Settings include the data classification for every project. By default, there are two main classification buckets: ‘Base’ and ‘Incremental’. Depending on the domain or category, you may want to create different groups within Base and Incremental. For example, some clients might want to create ‘Media’ and ‘Non-Media’ under Incremental. Others might call the same thing ‘ATL’ (Above the Line) and ‘BTL’ (Below the Line). Similarly, within Base, some clients might capture macroeconomic factors or price variables in a separate bucket, and for other clients, these might not be relevant. The admin of the URL creates a structure for everyone using the URL so a common nomenclature is utilized. 

To provide data classification within Global Settings, click on the input tab on the top left of the Global Settings page. Scroll down to find Data Classification. Click on ‘Create New Group’ and enter the name of the group you want to create. Next to the group name, fill in the relationship with the DV (dependent variable). This describes the relationship of all the variables within this group with the dependent variable. Media variables typically have a positive relationship with the dependent variable, while competition media usually have a negative relationship. After making the radio button selection, click on the ‘Add’ button. Once added successfully, the group name is created along with its relationship with the dependent variable, and edit and delete icons appear. The edit icon allows you to change the name of a group, and the delete icon removes the group from any new project created. Edits or deletions to a group name will not affect historically created projects. 

For example, if you have created 5 projects and then make changes to the global settings by editing a group name or deleting a group, the 6th project created will reflect these changes, but projects 1 to 5 will retain their original group names.

Apart from Data Classification, you can scroll down to see which variable units are currently available. We support GRP, impressions, clicks, TRP, and more. If other unit metrics are needed for any of your incremental or base variables, you can enter the name of the unit you wish to see in the variable properties within the input module. Enter the unit name in the text box and click ‘Add’. This unit name will be available for all users to select for any of their variables. 

There is also a currency drop-down, typically defaulted to USD. However, if you want to change it, you can select the appropriate currency from the drop-down. 

Within Global Settings, there is a modelling tab. Here you can set default transformations for all your variables. For example, by default, all base variables will have no transformations applied. If you wish to apply Adstock transformation for media, select the group, click on Media, and select the transformation type as Adstock. Provide a minimum decay, maximum decay, and increment for the parameters. For instance, if you provide a minimum decay of 0.1, a maximum decay of 0.9, and increments of 0.2, it will run iterations testing the decay at 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9. Once you provide these details, click on the ‘Add’ button. 

At the bottom of this settings tab, you can configure model outputs. For example, typically we do not split the base variables' contributions in model outputs. However, some users may want to see these splits. In such cases, you can select ‘Yes’ for ‘Show base variable contribution splits’. By default, this will be set to ‘No’. Anytime you switch from ‘No’ to ‘Yes’, all subsequent projects created will have ‘Yes’ as the default selection. 

You can also configure whether to show Return on Investment (ROI) or Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). By default, ROI is selected. Depending on your needs, you can change it to CAC, or select both, allowing you to switch between ROI and CAC in your outputs. Additionally, you can choose the effectiveness calculation method. Typically, effectiveness is calculated by dividing the KPI by the support of a variable. For some clients, effectiveness is calculated by dividing the volume by the spend of the variable. You can choose between KPI by support or KPI by spend, or select both to see effectiveness in terms of support and spend. 

If your KPI is revenue, you may not want to show revenue again in some outputs. If revenue is your KPI, select ‘No’ for ‘Show KPI and revenue next to each other’. This will allow the system to just show the KPI once. 

These are the important steps for setting up Global Settings. Any user using this URL will have defaults populated based on these global settings. 

To create a new project, click on the ‘Create New’ button. An overlay opens up where you can provide a unique name for the project, which must be at least 5 characters long, no more than 25 characters, and without any special characters or spaces. You can provide more information while creating the project. If there are multiple brands associated with your URL, you will see a brand drop-down. If there are multiple countries for which you model for your brand, you will see a country drop-down. For a single brand, single market project, provide the project name and click ‘Create’. If multiple countries are available in the drop-down, select the country and click ‘Create’. You will get a project created notification at the top. 

Based on the Global Settings provided by the admin, some default selections will be made for the demo project you just created. If you wish to edit any settings specifically for this demo project, click on the settings icon available on the demo project tile. 

Once you click on the project tile, it opens up into a single project view. At the top of the screen, you will see a drop-down for all projects to switch between them. Then you will see the modules: Input, Review, Modelling, Reports, and Simulation. If you scroll to the right and click on the user profile, you can access the settings drop-down. Within the settings drop-down, you have the project settings which can be clicked to make any changes to this particular project. 

For example, if the admin named groups within Incremental as Media and Non-Media, but for this project, you wish to change it to ATL and BTL, you can delete Media and Non-Media and rename them to ATL and BTL. 

Within Global Settings or Project Settings, users can create up to two levels of groups. For example, if Base and Incremental are level 0, within Incremental, you can create level 1 groups like Media and Non-Media. Within Media, you can create sub-buckets or sub-groups like Traditional and Digital, forming level 2. By default, this creates three levels of groups: level 0 (Base and Incremental), level 1 (Media and Non-Media), and level 2 (Traditional and Digital). Based on the country provided at the time of creating the project, the currency auto-populates. For example, if India and the USA are available and the user selects India, the currency will reflect Rupees. 

When setting auto-transform parameters under the Modelling tab, you can select the group for which you want to provide a specific transformation type. For instance, within Media, if you want Traditional Media to have Adstock with decay ranging from 0.5 to 0.9 and increment of 0.1, select Traditional Media, Adstock, and fill in the minimum, maximum, and increment values. Click ‘Add’ to save these parameters. For the rest of the Media variables, you may choose a different transformation, such as the log transformation. This allows you to customize transformations for different sub-groups within your project. 

Once these settings are defined, click ‘Save’ to apply changes to this project. 

The navigation and functionality across the single project view is consistent with the global settings overview but tailored to the specific project settings you've customized.